She Took My Arm As If She Loved Me (25 page)

“You can tell him to come downstairs, he doesn't have to hide,” I said.

“That won't be necessary. He's comfortable up there.”

“This is strictly business.”

“We understand that. But not strictly—please, Dan! You're a practical person, so I'm happy to reach this quality in you at last. Sometimes, isn't it true, friendship can be both difficult and practical?”

“Xavier! Hey!” I yelled. “Come on down.”

He didn't answer. Filling the silence were Karim's warm and loving words. “He doesn't want to. I think you hurt his feelings, Dan.”

Chapter 21

Blue-and-white trail-cruising landwhales lay beached near downtown Greyhound America just south of Market Street. Steam rose from a spout. The lot gave off motor oil and septic tank smells, plus eddies of troubled fast-food oxidation, ancient fish in cracked Styrofoam, errant small animals caught under wheels, crowds engaged in the worries of transport and inner flux. These days folks can travel Greyhound and enjoy all the comforts of home, but I wasn't sure about some of those homes. Just ahead lay the depot itself, the proper place for my stupid job, delivering a stupid package to a not-very-intelligent locker for which Karim had given me the key. I didn't know what was in the package because Karim said it wasn't necessary for me to know just yet. I could guess. I could figure it out. I could also figure that someone had a duplicate key. I hoped it wasn't Fred, my doctor and trusted pal, who had been putting his finger up my butt to test for rust on the prostate every year since I turned forty. If someone stuck a finger up there, I wanted it to be for a good purpose. Making me feel seasick didn't suffice. This job gave me something like the feeling of prostate pokery.

The Greyhound building off Market Street was an experimental space lab for pimps, hookers, runaways, outpatients with no in-clinics, a clubhouse for State Aid to the Totally Fucked. The urban concept “bus terminal” was only part of the idea. Heavy-metal junkies, speed, crack, and ice freaks, smokers, drinkers, inhalers, injectors, and fed-up philosophers who had settled for their daily methadone ration glumly kept moving, waiting for a relieving fit of violence to break the monotony. There were child bag brides, not so much anorexic as evaporated by crack, willing to take commuters off into a shady corner for an expeditious blow job that wouldn't delay their travel connections; moonfaced zombies on idiot chemicals; and the usual go-fast operators with beepers on their belts, talking into cellular phones or chattering at the ceiling, in case God was listening. At video machines, no-hip Southeast Asian kids, born not so long ago to mothers who only took off an hour from the rice paddies, now played at Western-style genocide with their new electronic toy guns, waiting out the months until they could get up to speed for the real world. It didn't take long. A few veteran Thorazine cripples herky-jerked by, trying to make the moving parts of their bodies follow along in other than random order.

The crusaders bound for Jerusalem may have looked like these folks (I was too young for personal experience of their trek across Europe and the Middle East). Maybe the lineup at Lourdes or at one of various blessed waterfalls in Africa attracted a crew like the one I was joining, carrying a package and the key to a locker. I was carrying the package and key because it served the purpose of my good friend and doctor, Fred, and also of Karim; and Alfonso and the police; and, it seemed, Xavier; and then there was Dan Kasdan, who had an oral contract that his former wife would not be named in any way. Not all these purposes were in any better arrangement than the purposes of the normal population of the depot.

A smell of Deep-Fried Pig Belly McNugget Slimsies advised the Vietnamese and Cambodians that this was America, get with the program, learn to eat like regular folks. A doughnut stand sold doughnuts and mysterious pale, skinless, meatlike products. Refugees making a new life couldn't be expected to know what kind of tree the McNuggets had been plucked from; hadn't crossed the briny Pacific to choke their guts with alien stuff; didn't trust what they smelled. If Xavier was here, even his Regatta scent would be overpowered. “Kin help yew,” said the hooker on the corner, an offer she repeated while her manager/trainer, Giants cap on backward, observed her technique from across the street. “Kin help yew? Hey, kin
help
yew.” I gave her an A for effort—garters showing, sticklike legs, a full adolescent bosom, perished eyes; she staggered when she tried to move toward me on regulation stilt heels. I held my silvery duct-taped package tight, the key in my fist. No, lady, can't help me.

A woman I hadn't noticed (must have been distracted) touched my arm and said, “You're kind of cute in your own special way. Sir? I got lots more similar remarks if you liked that one.”

The loudspeakers announced departures to sets of twin cities, paired concepts. Stockton and Denver … Sacramento and Eureka … Transcon Express. These were destinations to please the most picky patron. Muffled by tunnels, buses began the mission into the outside world with deep earthquake creakings. A salvationist screamed into a battery-powered megaphone: “You! Abandoned by the Lord! Do you have a moment to change your life?”

On track, I thought. Just now I was looking to find Karim, Xavier, and a crew of plainclothes cops, none of them in evidence. My nose was in overload; couldn't smell anyone I knew, not even Alfonso. I pushed into the waiting area. An unseen missionary with a squawk-box, licensed by Freedom of Religious Noise exemption laws, competed with official Greyhound destination announcements and his colleagues packing only a low-tech megaphone: “Join me on line with the quality Savior, brothern and sistern, Who asks whither you think you are fleeing in such a hurry with your bargain tickets … That's
Jee
sus, and without Him, do you think you can ever, ever,
ever
git there?”

Where I was going, I didn't need a ticket. I was like Jeff with my skate key tight in my hand.
SAY HELLO TO MADAMA SOPHIA
asked a sign above a former nuts-and-raisins stand. Madama Sophia, in return for this hello, would read my future in my hand. She sat nursing her baby, who, if I grasped the future correctly, would grow up to be a boy or girl. I kept the key in my hand, my package under my arm. I wished Alfonso would make himself visible. A black guy, a do-gooding peddler volunteering for the Tenderloin Self-Help Society, wore a merry row of condoms around his Bob Hope–Bing Crosby porkpie hat. “Condoms! Free rubbers! Get your free condoms now!” He was hawking them like a priest distributing hot-cross buns and paused before a pimp who said, “Yo, man, no use for them things. I got sharp sperm, they cut right through that rubber, swim right through that lube, man.” Neither of them was Alfonso. “Barrels right through, man.”

I didn't want to drop my load in the locker and head away. I wanted to see results. I wanted to know if Karim was there watching, if the plainclothes guys were there—maybe the plainclothes women, if Alfonso was properly looking after his buddy. I didn't feel easy with my ignorance. I stalled, still holding the package with a sense of clumsiness, as if my thumb were caught in a bottle. Something was caught and making me wince.

A person in a hurry or very careless had left a muddy Nike near Madama Sophia's mitt camp. He had gone running so fast after his fortune or his bus, been chased so imperatively by his fate, that he lightened up by one foot. Maybe it was all he had time for. Sophia had predicted he could fly if he chose to, or he was trying to flee from crack brawlers or chattering geriatrics claiming attention, leaving this shoe as guarantee that he'd be right back. I headed in where the lockers were stacked, headed through the thickness of hot pork, frying grease, used air. A drunk lurched against me, too preoccupied to demand an apology but blew his green thick gasp of liver disease into my face. I wasn't happy here. I could do nothing about the amplified instructions crackling from the loudspeaker (another bus for Sacramento, departure imminent) and the pathless trekking of terminal wanderers. There was no way to close down my ears or my nose. Here I was, standing in front of the lockers. I found my number.

This was my lucky day. I had remembered to load my pocket with quarters. I plucked the coins from my stash, inserted the key, looked around for company. None visible; some invisible.

I dropped the quarters into the slot for number 49, as instructed. They made a parking meter music going down. The key fit. Now I didn't look around guiltily; I stared ahead guiltily and stuck the package into the locker and shut it and turned the key and that was the deal. No lightning struck me; today was still lucky. Now to get out of here.

After I'd gone twenty short steps, back toward Sophia's palm-reading outpost again, curiosity got the best of me and I turned to see an old friend, not Karim, inserting his copy of the key into lock number 49. Dressed for a safari with Ralph Lauren, with his usual lounging grace, he made no compromise with the Greyhound environment in these premises. My husband-in-law was playing funny games with me. Not Karim. Not Karim. Xavier, the early-stage divorcée's consolation. Congratulations, old chap, now we have the same beloved and duplicate keys.

“Hold it! Freeze! Hold it, hold it, hold it!”

They came from behind Sophia's mitt camp. The palm reader must have predicted they would be there since she already knew all things, past and future. They brought their palms with them, their badges, their weapons.

“Hold it guy, don't move fella, hold it!”

About a dozen of the depot-dwelling Greyhound people wearily took familiar positions, hands flat against the nearest wall, ready to be felt for guns, knives, or plastic bags of illegal substances. They looked bored to be bothered again, and then perturbed, peeking around, all their conceptions of race, color, hair style, and dress sent flying as the cops rushed the sportive, lounging, grinning, untattooed Xavier.

Xavier was entertained. A lock of hair fell becomingly across his forehead, emphasizing boyish and bemused and having a curious time of it, old chap. His scent made no effort to get through the terminal fry, dirt, and cleaning-fluid smells. He was standing with the package under his arm, ready to return to sender.

None of this seemed like normal procedure. I was wondering why Xavier didn't wait for me to get out of Greyhoundland before he used his key, why the cops were circling him as if he were dangerous prey, what Alfonso was doing here, keeping us all company. He might as well have been a tourist from Stockton with his family's Instamatic. The Greyhound folks didn't seem to want to talk about the events in our vicinity since all discussion was quieted except for the continuing drone of arrival and departure announcements. In general, cops were taking over. Xavier was happy to see everybody.

A meaty sergeant with a refrigerator bulk said, “Hand it over.”

Xavier enjoyed his life. He looked me up and down, saying, “Those shoes, they promote a lot of athlete's foot, don't they, Dan? The heat, the humidity. Tend to?”

Wearing a suit, a matching jacket and pants of some sort of worsted fabric, just hanging out while he awaited an arrival, Alfonso watched from a proper distance. He was dressed for medium civilian success. The deep furrows in his forehead, skin almost folding over itself with concern, told me he was figuring something new about this whole deal. Something wasn't going how it was supposed to. He came closer. “If I may ask, may I ask what you doing here, sir?”

“You may,” said Xavier.

The sergeant was pulling at the tape on the package, just loosening it. He was planning to open it in front of witnesses.

“Visiting the bus station,” said Xavier, “which is a public place, I believe, although not a public utility. The ground transportation depot, a recourse for those who prefer not to fly.”

“Where's Karim?” I asked.

“Karim? Oh,
Karim.
”

It was clear now. Karim was trying me out and Xavier was here to watch my performance and for extra fun. The refrigerator sergeant nodded to his partner. Then the duct tape screamed as he ripped the top of the box, which was filled with glassine envelopes containing a white powder. It would have been cocaine if it wasn't baby powder, corn starch, powdered sugar …

“We're gonna take you in,” the sergeant said to Xavier.

“I bet you think so. I bet you think so. I bet you want to,” Xavier remarked.

“Okay, mister.”

“For Dr. Scholl's? Relief for hot itchy toes?” Xavier was hugely pleased with the turning of developments, showing teeth white as teacups and, for all I know, real. Under other circumstances I could determine the answer to this question by knocking them out of his mouth.

Alfonso grumbled unnecessarily in my ear, “Foot powder, bet it is,” and I didn't even need to agree, and he added, “That's part of the game sometimes.” He put his hand on my arm. He didn't want to see me jumping the happy lounging fellow who stood alert and comfortable in our little group. Up close there was a new smell: a slosh of underground sewers and bus exhaust seeping through the odds against their seeping through, plus nearby Greyhound cooking and cleaning combined with the even more nearby tang of a tennis cologne.

Xavier looked to me as if he were photosensitive, a papery person-substance waiting to have interesting events printed upon him. I'm sure he was not a blank sheet to himself; as far as he was concerned, he had a soul that required aid and comfort from Priscilla, recognition from Dan Kasdan, public acknowledgment of personal distinction. In his heart of hearts he believed he had the right to all of the above.

Alfonso held tightly to my arm. As a warning. To keep me on earth and not jumping. I snapped loose and he grabbed again, hard and angry. “Try to think,” he muttered. My friend Alfonso was a meat-filled restraining order I had better obey.

A band of orange-clad Hare Krishnas, all wound up and banging away, chanting away, blissed away, steered itself through the terminal like a single organism of marauding leaf-cutters. Their shaved heads and shining orange robes—a smudge of reddish grease on their foreheads—made them look alien beyond the tinny, overwhelmingly sincere, mouth-breathing chant. One of them had acquired a brown stain across his cheek. He seemed different from the others, an imperfect earth being, growing along with his birthmark, evolving through time, the bearer of a scaly crust due to fungus, sun exposure, or parental flaws on delicate Celtic skin.